Welcome to episode thirteen of ‘The Life and Death of Jeff’. In this episode we’ll continue our journey by examining the true story behind the media campaign against Prince Andrew, and I’ll be revealing, for the first time, the identity of the woman with whom Jeffrey role-played Lolita characters with.
So, let’s begin...
It was an early Sunday morning with gentle winds and the sun partially poking through the clouds, when a deliveryman scooped up a weighty stack of newspapers from a London newsagent’s and conveyed them, first by van, then by foot, to the statue-flanked black iron gates of Royal Mews behind Buckingham Palace. Handing the consignment over to a security guard, the stack then embarked on the daily humdrum journey through a chain of staff, making its way into the heart of the British monarchy; through security checks and scanners; to the mail room staff who arranged the newspapers in a particular order, and finally into the hands of Queen Elizabeth’s equerry, a senior personal aide, who arranged them neatly on a tray.
Briefly checking his suit was straight and corgi hair-free, he glanced down at the Mail on Sunday’s headline and, on seeing the photograph printed beside it, gulped. His perfectly polished shoes marched him down the corridor, leading him into the first-floor dining room, overlooking the Palace’s gardens, just on time, just as they did every morning, 8:30 a.m on the button. The Queen and her husband, Prince Philip, were already sitting at the table, the monarch tucking into her usual breakfast of Special K cereal from a Tupperware container and toast and marmalade.
Placing the tray down on a white clothed side table, the valet briskly departed, glad that he would be absent when the ink-based grenade detonated. Sifting through their favourites first, Philip and Elizabeth scanned the usual stories and sections. Then she saw the front page of The Mail on Sunday, passing over the story of a crack team of commandos who had just rescued 150 civilians from remote oilfields in war-torn Libya, and straight to the tabloid’s main story with a headline that read, ‘Exclusive: Andrew and 17-year-old girl at centre of under-age sex case that has scandalised America.’
It wasn’t the first damaging headline to hit her favourite son.
